We Need
by Ellarose C
Summary: I didn't say 'I want' or 'I think.' I said 'we need.' It's for both of our benefits that we go -" I swallowed tears - "our own ways." Kataang breakup; no other ships involved.


We Need (aka The Gods)

It was windy when I left him.

I didn't expect anything less. He is the only airbender in the world - chances are that when he gets angry, the wind blows. It still hurt to feel the ends of my hair sting my skin as I shouldered my hastily (but carefully) packed bag and walked toward the train station.

It was a long time coming, this walk. It should have happened sooner. We weren't really as good for each other like he - we - had always hoped. I flip-flopped between treating him as a baby and as a brother; he was dangerously attached to me and prone to acts of violence in my honor. The Avatar couldn't afford such attachments, especially whilst dealing with the ends of a hundred-year war.

Gusts battered my back, pushing me onward and reeling me in at once as the common, sane folk of the town fled from nature's lament. I kept walking forward.

It had come to a peak just now. There was nothing special about the night. The two of us were sitting at our house's parlor table - the house lent to us by the town leaders until we were called away to attend to the world's every malady - and he was talking at me about his day. I feigned interest. The lectures of my friends, given during recent times, were eating at my head repetitively.

_"He's a man, not your child. Stop treating him as both."_

_"It's not healthy, these mixed signals! A man needs confirmation."_

_"Dammit, Katara, stop being so nice and sweet to him! Someone his age doesn't need nice, he needs... he needs a partner, not a protector!"_

_"It'll hurt him, yes, but you're hurting him more but sheltering him from the world as it is. He's not twelve anymore."_

_"You don't even love him anymore, do you?"_

_"You won't be happy if you keep this up, You can't - or won't - recognize the man he's become because you cling the child he once was."_

_"A man,"_ I thought both in the house and on the street. Metal and wooden chimes clanged together incessantly, their discordant notes staining my tears as I hurried, hurried away...

Back in the town house, I put down my teacup purposely, smiling sadly. He looked up with a question mark on his face. "Katara? Is something wrong?"

"You've grown up," I stated. He was startled.

"I - I guess... I mean, it _has_ been four years," he said proudly, examining himself as if he'd just noticed. I turned up from my teacup and looked, really _looked_, at him for the first time in a while.

He'd become attractive. He'd filled out even more since the day of Sozin's comet, and his wide-eyed adolescent form had mellowed to a confident teenager thrown into politics long before it was wise. He was mature, kind-hearted, sexy as hell, and a leader. He'd become a man when I wasn't looking.

But he wasn't the same.

I wasn't sure why I didn't get the same knot in my stomach when I looked at him that I had when I was young. Maybe it was the effect of age. Maybe it was the work of those minute personality changes that, alone, mean nothing, but together shape a new self. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was me.

Maybe it was all of the above.

"We're not the same people we used to be," I stated in the same tone I'd used before. His eyebrows knit together. That wasn't a habit of the old Aang.

"What are you getting a-"

"We need to split up."

The words flowed from my tongue with ease, surprising both of us. I would say he took it worse than I did.

"WHAT?!" he shouted, standing with an element-enhanced bang. I could feel his anger in boiling waves hitting my skin and feet. The shutters clattered in their hinges from the inside and outside. He was brewing up a fury-fueled windstorm. I struggled to keep my features as something resembling calm. "Why?" His airbender eyes told me stories of anger, confusion, hate, betrayal - all harmless blows compared to this.

"I'm going to say this once," I called over the wind's noise, my voice bordering on tear-filled. Damn, it hurt me to hurt this bo- _man. _"I didn't say 'I want' or 'I think.' I said _'we need.'_ It's for both of our benefits that we go -" I swallowed tears - "our own ways."

"But... _why?"_ The anger was giving into heartbreak; the gale was giving into breeze. My heart cracked even more at that voice. I stared at the pattern engraved into the table.

"Because we've grown apart, literally." Water came out of my eyes. "You're not a child I can mother anymore and pretend it's romantic love. You're a man-"

"Someone put you up to this, didn't they?" My head snapped up as the hinges rattled even more forcefully than before. He was all afire again, raging along the length of the table. "You were forced to do this, you wouldn't hurt anyone voluntarily - you wouldn't hurt _me_-"

"Aang, no one's putting me up to -

"I bet it's Zuko!"

"Zuko? But-"

"Admit it, you've always had a thing for the guy - the catacombs - the agni kai with Azula-"

"Aang!" I cut him off impatiently, standing up to prove some point. "Zuko has nothing to do with this!"

"I bet you're going to run away to him now," he continued, my voice lost in the wind and his rage. "You'll let him burn all your troubles away with his mighty Fire Lord powers-"

_SMACK!_

The wind stopped in its tracks.

"You see!? This is _exactly_ why we need to split up!" I told him over his shocked cries as he held his stinging cheek. "You've become even more possessive of me, more attached - Aang, it's not _healthy!" _Guilt, laced with shame, filtered into his expression. He dropped to the floor in a sloppy lotus position. I stepped around to kneel in front of him, gingerly stroking his slapped cheek. He kept his eyes on his hands.

"You're incredibly right, Katara," he told me after a cold minute of silence. His voice felt odd, like he was projecting his voice over a crowd instead of straight to me. "I can't believe... it's gone so _long..."_

"We both let it go too far," I said softly, sliding my hand under his jawbone. It had a shape now. Our eyes met; abruptly, I stood up.

"I need to leave," I told him, striding past him towards my room. He turned in his seat after me.

"What?"

"There's places I need to go, things I've left undone," I told him as I walked down the hallway. He scrambled to follow.

"But... _now?_ It's past sundown!" he tried to persuade me with logic.

"I'm a master waterbender. I think I'll be fine." I slid the paper screen that served as my door back and started packing through tear-stained vision.

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know. I just need to get away."

Suddenly, he pulled into a bone-crushing hug. My arms naturally fell around his waist, even though my eyes were wide. He was finally taller than me. "Promise you'll be careful," he murmured into my hair. I smiled against his shoulder.

"You know me, I'm as careful as they come." I let him hold me for a moment before pulling away slowly. "I know you're hurt," I said, my hands framing his face. "I know this seems unexpected. But heartache is the natural toll of the world. You'll make it through, and you'll find someone better suited to the man you than me." I let him go and threw the last few items in my bag. "We'll be friends again, soon," I said to him with a smile. "That'll never change." I brushed past him to the screen.

"Katara?" I stopped. "You'll find someone better suited to the woman you, too." I smiled again, then continued out into the hall.

"And we'll never stop being friends in the first place!" he called after me a moment later as I opened the front door and left, that wind following me, calling...

I had reached the train station at last. The air flowed in eddies around me, and the debris of Aang's gusts settled to the ground. I walked up to the ticket window and pulled out the standard fare for a long-distance, one-way trip. "One for Omashu, please." The teller changed coins for paper, peering out at the streets.

"Funky weather we're having today, eh?" he commented as he handed over my ticket. "One minute it's as wild as a hog-monkey, the next it's a docile little koala-lamb. Makes you almost believe in Gods, huh? Gods with tempers and problems just like us, but bigger." He made a large gesture with his hands. I nodded absently.

"Yeah... Gods..." I smiled vaguely and pocketed my ticket, turning away. A breeze fingered through my hair, bringing an image of a boy-turned-man, sitting by himself with the weight of the world on his back and wondering... I closed my eyes and smiled.

I wasn't sure about Gods, but I sure believed in spirits.


End file.
